KeyboardEvent objects describe a user interaction with the keyboard; each event describes a single interaction between the user and a key (or combination of a key with modifier keys) on the keyboard. The event type (keydown, keypress, or keyup) identifies what kind of keyboard activity occurred.

Note:KeyboardEvent events just indicate what interaction the user had with a key on the keyboard at a low level, providing no contextual meaning to that interaction. When you need to handle text input, use the input event instead. Keyboard events may not be fired if the user is using an alternate means of entering text, such as a handwriting system on a tablet or graphics tablet.

Returns a DOMString representing the character value of the key. If the key corresponds to a printable character, this value is a non-empty Unicode string containing that character. If the key doesn't have a printable representation, this is an empty string.

Note: If the key is used as a macro that inserts multiple characters, this attribute's value is the entire string, not just the first character.

Returns a Number representing the Unicode reference number of the key; this attribute is used only by the keypress event. For keys whose char attribute contains multiple characters, this is the Unicode value of the first character in that attribute. In Firefox 26 this returns codes for printable characters.

Warning: This attribute is deprecated; you should use KeyboardEvent.key instead, if available.

Returns a DOMString with the code value of the physical key represented by the event.

Warning: This ignores the user's keyboard layout, so that if the user presses the key at the "Y" position in a QWERTY keyboard layout (near the middle of the row above the home row), this will always return "KeyY", even if the user has a QWERTZ keyboard (which would mean the user expects a "Z" and all the other properties would indicate a "Z") or a Dvorak keyboard layout (where the user would expect an "F").

Returns a Number representing a system and implementation dependent numeric code identifying the unmodified value of the pressed key; this is usually the same as keyCode.

Warning: This attribute is deprecated; you should use KeyboardEvent.key instead, if available.

Usage notes

There are three types of keyboard events: keydown, keypress, and keyup. For most keys, Gecko dispatches a sequence of key events like this:

When the key is first depressed, the keydown event is sent.

If the key is not a modifier key, the keypress event is sent.

When the user releases the key, the keyup event is sent.

Special cases

Some keys toggle the state of an indicator light; these include keys such as Caps Lock, Num Lock, and Scroll Lock. On Windows and Linux, these keys dispatch only the keydown and keyup events.

On Linux, Firefox 12 and earlier also dispatched the keypress event for these keys.

However, a limitation of the macOS event model causes Caps Lock to dispatch only the keydown event. Num Lock was supported on some older laptop models (2007 models and older), but since then, macOS hasn't supported Num Lock even on external keyboards. On older MacBooks with a Num Lock key, that key doesn't generate any key events. Gecko does support the Scroll Lock key if an external keyboard which has an F14 key is connected. In certain older versions of Firefox, this key generated a keypress event; this inconsistent behavior was bug 602812.

Auto-repeat handling

When a key is pressed and held down, it begins to auto-repeat. This results in a sequence of events similar to the following being dispatched:

keydown

keypress

keydown

keypress

<<repeating until the user releases the key>>

keyup

This is what the DOM Level 3 specification says should happen. There are some caveats, however, as described below.

Auto-repeat on some GTK environments such as Ubuntu 9.4

In some GTK-based environments, auto-repeat dispatches a native key-up event automatically during auto-repeat, and there's no way for Gecko to know the difference between a repeated series of keypresses and an auto-repeat. On those platforms, then, an auto-repeat key will generate the following sequence of events:

keydown

keypress

keyup

keydown

keypress

keyup

<<repeating until the user releases the key>>

keyup

In these environments, unfortunately, there's no way for web content to tell the difference between auto-repeating keys and keys that are just being pressed repeatedly.

Auto-repeat handling prior to Gecko 5.0

After the initial keydown event, only keypress events are sent until the keyup event occurs; the inter-spaced keydown events are not sent.

Linux

The event behavior depends on the specific platform. It will either behave like Windows or Mac depending on what the native event model does.

Note: Manually firing an event does not generate the default action associated with that event. For example, manually firing a key event does not cause that letter to appear in a focused text input. In the case of UI events, this is important for security reasons, as it prevents scripts from simulating user actions that interact with the browser itself.

Specifications

The KeyboardEvent interface specification went through numerous draft versions, first under DOM Events Level 2 where it was dropped as no consensus arose, then under DOM Events Level 3. This led to the implementation of non-standard initialization methods, the early DOM Events Level 2 version, KeyboardEvent.initKeyEvent() by Gecko browsers and the early DOM Events Level 3 version, KeyboardEvent.initKeyboardEvent() by others. Both have been superseded by the modern usage of a constructor: KeyboardEvent().